Wikispaces Offer for K-12 Education

In January 2006, Wikispaces began offering our Plus Plan for free for K-12 education. If your wiki will be used exclusively for K-12 education, you can begin your ad-free, private Wikispace by registering at http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers.

If you already have a Wikispace but didn't register it under our K-12 Plan, Click "Manage Space" then "Subscription" then under "Request a complimentary upgrade to Plus for K-12 education" click "Request yours now".

Look and Feel of Your Wiki

You can choose what colors you wiki will display, as well as some layout features.

1. Click . The link's location varies according to the selected theme.
2. Under Settings, click Look & Feel.
3. There are two features that give you control over the look of your wiki.
   • Theme: Let's you determine the overall look of your wiki, like the location of the menu bar and the placement of links.
   • Colors: You can change the colors of your wiki, but how many parts of the page to which you can apply colors depends on the chosen theme. For instance, AquaFluid only lets you change the link color while Boxy allows four color changes (background, menu, sidebar and link).

Edit a Page

• Click Edit. Where this link is located and what it looks like varies according to the theme.
• Save and Save often!
  
• You can also Cancel if you change your mind.

Text

• You type on the wiki page much like word processing. The Editor bar provides some text formatting options.
  
• Click the drop-down menu to formatting headings.
  
• Click the text tool for more text formatting options.
  

Links

• You can create links to web pages.
  1. You will need the web address (URL) of the site. If it's short and you know it, it can just be typed in. Otherwise, navigate to the web site from a bookmark or WWW search, highlight the URL, and copy it.
  2. On the wiki page, type the text for web page, like Lit2Go.
  3. Highlight the text (e.g., Lit2Go) and click the Insert Link button.
  4. Select the External Link tab and in the Address box, type or paste the URL. If you want the browser to open the web site in a new window or new tab, check New Window. Your link will look like this: Lit2Go.

• You can create a link to other pages in your wiki.
  1. Type the text for the wiki page.
  2. Highlight the text and click the Insert Link button.
  3. On the Wiki Link tab, if the page already exists click Choose an existing page and choose one of the pages from the drop down. Otherwise, click Add Link and the page will be created and the link will look like this: New Page.
     Note: The link will be red until the page is edited.

Adding Images and Documents

You can add images to wiki pages. You can also include files like Word and PowerPoint documents for downloading by the wiki's members. First, you upload the files to Wikispaces and then you add them to the page. Any file formats can be used. The free wikis for education offer is a "Plus Plan," so you have 2 GB of storage and a maximum per file upload size limit of 20 MB.

1. Place the cursor in the place on the page where you want the image or document to be located.
2. In the Editor bar, click the Insert Images and Files button.
3. Select the tab.
4. Click the the link that says, "Click here to to use our single file upload tool," select the file, and click Select. Wait for the uploading to finish.
5. Simply double-click the icon of the uploaded file to place the image or document on the page.

Widgets

A widget gives you the ability to embed special features like a video, calendar, or other dynamic content. The video at the top of the Wiki page is an example of a video from TeacherTube that has been embedded on a wiki page.

1. To add a widget, click the Embed Widget button on the Editor bar.
2. Select one of the Widgets and follow the directions for that particular feature.
3. This is a Map widget. On the Google Maps page, you display the map you want. Click the Link button. Find the code to embed the map on a web page, copy it, and then paste it into the Map Widget box.
   

Discussion Tab

You can create blog-like discussions on your wiki. Each page has a Discussion tab and you can have multiple discussions per page.

1. Click the Discussion tab.
2. Enter a subject for the discussion, like Wiki Uses.
3. Enter a message. This could be a question you pose or a statement to which participants react.
4. If you want to be notified whenever a response is posted, check "Monitor this topic."
5. Click the Post button.

To post a reply to a message:

1. Click the Discussion Tab.
2. DO NOT enter a subject and message! This creates a new discussion.
3. There is a list of discussion topics at the top. Below is the list from our first EETT Grant inservice. Click the subject link for the topic.
4. 
5. The first item at the top is your original posting with your discussion information in the message. The student should read this.
6. The student scrolls down the page, where they can read previous postings. At the bottom of the page in the Reply section the student enters his/her response in the message box and clicks the Post button.

User Creator

You need to give your students access to the wiki. To do this, you create a list of usernames and passwords for them.

1. Create a list to upload to Wikispaces. Create the list in a word processing program. Below are the directions from Wikispaces Help.
   NOTE: You do NOT have to include the email address. Username and password are sufficient.

How do I format the list for bulk account creation?

To create accounts easily, format your list in the following manner with commas separating usernames, email addresses (if you have them - if you don't just leave them out), and passwords:

• user1,email1@address.com,password1
  user2,email2@address.com,password2
  user3,email3@address.com,password3

A few important notes that will help us create these accounts for you quickly:

• Usernames
• We have a large number of accounts on Wikispaces, so many combinations of first names, last names, and initials are already taken. It's much more likely all the accounts can be made as you ask if you add a school identifier to your students' usernames. For example, if your school is called John Smith High, instead of asking us for the usernames, adam, james, and dom, we recommend jsh-adam, jsh-james, and jsh-dom.
• Length of Usernames and Passwords
• Please make sure that usernames are at least 3 characters long (we allow letters, numbers, underscores _, or dashes -) and that passwords are at least 6 characters long.
• Which Wiki?
• Finally, if you are sending us the list, make sure to let us know which wikis we should add them to as members.

1. Select (highlight) the entire list and Edit > Copy.
2. Click . The link's location varies according to the selected theme.
3. Under People, click .
4. Under "Which wikis do you want to add users to?" select the wiki(s) for which this group of students need access.
5. For "How would you like to enter your list?" select "I will paste in a text list...."
6. Click in the box and Edit > Paste.
7. Click Continue.
8. Answer these questions.
   
   1st question: IF the list has a header because you exported the list from another program, the answer is Yes. Otherwise, answer No.
   2nd question: Column 1.
   3rd question: "These users do not have email addresses."
   4th question: Column 2.
9. Click Continue.
10. Check the usernames and passwords on the Verification page. If all is correct, click Continue. If not, click Back and correct errors.
11. Print the confirmation page for your records. You should also receive a confirmation email.